Tuesday, November 11, 2014

THE FAIRY DUST OF SPORTS NEWS

As a friend of mine wrote me this just a few moments ago. "They will take your story, sprinkle fairy dust on it, and make it their own."

My friend is very wise. That's because he knows this business inside and out. Bleeding Yankee Blue is a newbie. Despite being around for 4 years, it's a small shop built on passion, not money and power. That's why when I read that Joe Sheehan of Sports Illustrated had a newsletter (that you need to pay for to read, by the way) and wrote that David Robertson could possibly go to the Mets, I immediately thought, "I guess that newsletter is Bleeding Yankee Blue's piece titled: SOURCE: METS WANT DROB FOR LEADERSHIP & "TOP" CLOSER from November 6th, a story that no one on the face of the earth would have known about."

That's because the source was my own!

(In photo: Joe Sheehan of SI, with fake egg on his face)

Now, While it's not unusual for a free agent to be connected to any Major League club, I found it to be a bit unusual that we were the first to break this story about a conversation that took place in Mets camp over a week ago, and suddenly, as if a fairy did something magical, it appeared on Joe Sheehan's newsletter this morning. It was the same newsletter that appeared in ESPN SweetSpot's David Schoenfield's piece titled David Robertson to the Mets?

Yup, that's right. In it, Schoenfield wrote: "As it turns out, Joe Sheehan mentioned this in his newsletter this morning. He wrote,No,
if the Mets do sign another [compensation-eligible] free agent, I
suspect it will be David Robertson. Robertson fills a position of
perceived need, closer, where the Mets have a number of options but none
with a track record of success. Robertson, as Granderson did a year
ago, comes with familiarity to the fan base, a built-in credibility."

That's SO WEIRD! I remember writing something on BYB like that. More wordy of course, because I'm not a "big sports guy" with SI, but still. I wrote:

"The idea is to get him over there
on a 4 year deal and tout him as one of the Mets “leaders”. Something, this
person suggested, the Mets "currently lack."... Anyway, the plan would be to set up with Jenrry Mejia, and close with DRob. While the Mets liked Mejia as their closer,
they aren't truly convinced he's a closer yet. "

Wow. That's amazing. A Thesaurus is a great tool. Hey, maybe I should start a newsletter... mine would be free of charge.Now look, I could cry to you and tell you I feel violated, but that's not what this is about. It more about me being blown away that a sports operation could have a guy, clearly too full of himself, to not want to credit the little guy. Somehow they've managed to reinvent a story they read on Bleeding Yankee Blue, sprinkled fair dust on it, only to make it their own. Am I mad? No... I'm actually flattered. But here's a message...Throw the little guy proper respect once in a while. Do what other top publications do when they read my pages... throw us a bone. We may be small, but so were you once. I leave my audience with a quote my friend wrote me... the same friend from above. He said:"Always read and always write." That's a powerful statement. As a writer, you feel the passion within and you start typing and it flows. But you need a trigger. This fairy dust story by Joe Sheehan was my trigger, and this piece you're reading is my passion. I wanted to share it with you... not so the BYB readers could flood Sheehan's inbox with hate, that's low rent. It's more to make a statement;

Give and take in this biz is important. Give a compliment, get one. Credit a publication, it's an unspoken rule, but you get credit in return. I've given credit and I get it returned alot... be it ESPN's Peter Keating (HERE) or Mark Simon (HERE), or Pete Caldera of the Bergen Record (HERE). But it wasn't returned from Joe Sheehan of SI like it should have been.

So it ends here. I'm flattered that Sheehan found my story about David Robertson worth re-tooling, but he broke the rules. No, I'm not gonna "tell on" him to the Internet police, I'm going to do something else.